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Omar Deghayes
| place_of_birth = Tripoli, Libya | date_of_death = | place_of_death = | detained_at = Guantanamo | id_number = 727 | group = Libyan Islamic Fighting Group | alias = | charge = no charge (extrajudicial detention) | penalty = | status = repatriated to the United Kingdom | occupation = law student | spouse = | parents = | children = }} Omar Deghayes (born November 28, 1969) is a Libyan citizen with residency status in the United Kingdom, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He currently lives in the United Kingdom. After his arrest, he was taken into US military custody and sent to Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 727. His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith alleges that Deghayes was blinded by pepper spray inside the prison. Deghayes' father was a union organiser who was executed in Libya while Omar was still a child. After this the family moved to the United Kingdom as refugees. They lived in Brighton According to the Birmingham Post Deghayes was a "laws graduate"; he studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and later studied in Huddersfield. His family has mounted a campaign to free Deghayes. This campaign has received the support of the Brighton Argus newspaper and all six Members of Parliament in Sussex, where Omar Deghayes resided for many years and where his family still live. On February 3, 2005 US District Court Justice Joyce Hens Green ordered that Deghayes, among other Guantánamo detainees, should be protected by the fifth amendment to the US Constitution. In 2006, the British High Court considered whether the United Kingdom government should petition the United States government, on behalf of Guantánamo detainees who had legal residency status.Judges powerless over detainees at Guantánamo, The Guardian, May 5, 2006 The High Court concluded that they did not have the authority to make recommendation in the area of foreign affairs. They also called the evidence that the British residents were being tortured was "powerful". The British government requested his release in August 2007, citing new openness on the part of the American administration. He was released on 18 December 2007; on his return to Britain, he was arrested under a Spanish warrant and has been released on bail while his case is considered. Arrest The "Save Omar" campaign has stated that Deghayes, who had moved temporarily to Pakistan with his Afghan wife and child, was arrested, along with his family, by bounty hunters in Pakistan and taken to Bagram Theater Internment Facility. His wife and child were later released.www.save-omar.org.uk Abuse claims Deghayes has claimed that Guantanamo guards held him down and sprayed pepper spray directly into his eyes. Deghayes says that they then rubbed a rag soaked in pepper spray into the cornea of his right eye, which had already been weakened by a blow he received when he was a child. He says that he is now blind in that eye. According to Deghayes's account: "...troops marched into his cellblock 'singing and laughing' before spraying his face with mace and digging their fingers into his eyes as an officer shouted 'More! More.' ...My eye has gone a milky white color ... After all I have been through in my life to save it." The DoD declined to comment on specific abuse claims. However, DoD spokesman Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico repeated his counter-claim that al Qaeda training manuals instruct al Qaeda members to lie about abuse, if captured, to trigger international outrage. He called Guantanamo:"...a safe, humane and professional detention operation..." On August 10, 2007, Deghayes's family released a detailed dossier listing the tortures he claims to have been subjected to while in U.S. custody.Guantánamo Man’s Family Release ‘Torture’ Dossier· Relatives of UK resident publicise allegations· Family of Libyan national release detailed dossier - CommonDreams.org Deghayes reported that he: *Saw a soldier shoot a captive. *Witnessed the partial drowning of captives. *Saw a guard throw a Koran into a toilet. *Saw a Moroccan/Italian named Abdulmalik beaten to death. *Saw another captive beaten until the floor poured with blood, and he was left permanently brain-damaged. *Was permanently blinded when a guard stuck his finger in his eye. *Had excrement smeared on his face. *Experienced sexual abuse, which was too traumatic to be described in detail. *Was subjected to electric shocks. *Was kept naked in the freezing cold and had freezing water thrown on him. *Was starved for forty-five days. *Received repeated death threats. Facial recognition One of the allegations Deghayes faced was that American intelligence analysts had acquired a video-tape that identified Deghayes as one of the individuals in an Chechnyan rebel video tape. However, the opinion of Professor Tim Valentine of Goldsmiths College, a facial recognition expert, is that the face in the videotape could not possibly be Deghayes. It lacks the clearly identifiable marks left by a childhood injury. Clive Stafford Smith said that the face in the videotape was eventually identified as a Chechen named Abu Walid. He said the face looked more like Fidel Castro than his client. Hunger strikes Deghayes was one of the hunger strikers who joined the most publicized hunger strike at the camp, said to have been triggered by the beating of Hisham Sliti. According to an article by Clive Stafford Smith, Deghayes wrote: :"I am slowly dying in this solitary prison cell, I have no rights, no hope. So why not take my destiny into my own hands, and die for a principle?" Combatant Status Review Tribunal Initially the Bush Presidency asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged before the Judicial branch. Critics argued that the USA could not evade its obligation to conduct competent tribunals to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status. Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The Tribunals, however, were not authorized to determine whether the captives were ''lawful combatants -- rather they were merely empowered to make a recommendation as to whether the captive had previously been correctly determined to match the Bush Presidency's definition of an enemy combatant. Summary of Evidence memo A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Omar Amer Deghayes's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on 27 September 2004. The memo listed the following allegations against him: Administrative Review Board hearing | pages= 1 | author=Spc Timothy Book | date=Friday March 10, 2006 | accessdate=2007-10-12 }}]] Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant". They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat – or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free. First annual Administrative Review Board A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Omar Amer Deghayes's first annual Administrative Review Board, on May 24, 2005. The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention. The following primary factors favor continued detention The following primary factors favor release or transfer Transcript Omar Deghayes's Presiding Officer concluded that he chose not to attend his Administrative Review Board hearing. Second annual Administrative Review Board A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Omar Amer Deghayes's second annual Administrative Review Board, on 8 August 2006. The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention. The following primary factors favor continued detention The following primary factors favor release or transfer Release On August 7, 2007 the United Kingdom government requested the release of Omar Deghayes and four other detainees who had been legal British residents. The UK government warned that the negotiations might take months. On 18 December 2007, Deghayes was freed from Guantanamo Bay and subsequently flown to the UK. Spanish extradition request On his return, Deghayes and Jamil El-Banna were arrested and questioned, before appearing in court on a Spanish extradition warrant. He was freed on bail on 20 December, conditions of which include obeying a curfew and wearing an electronic tag. On Thursday March 6, 2008 Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon dropped the extradition request on humanitarian grounds. Garzon based his decision on a medical examination made public on February 12, 2008. The report said Deghayes suffered from: "post-traumatic stress syndrome, severe depression and suicidal tendencies. Garzon ruled the two men's mental health had deteriorated so badly it would be cruel to prosecute them. Torture claims investigation On April 29, 2009, that Spanish investigating magistrate Baltazar Garzon initiated a formal investigation into whether confessions from Deghayes and three other former Guantanamo captives were the result of the use of abusive interrogation techniques. Deghayes and the three other men: Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, Lahcen Ikassrien, and Jamiel Abdul Latif al Banna, had previously faced charges in Spanish courts, based on confessions they made while in US custody. Their charges had been dropped based on their claims that their confessions were false and were the result of abusive interrogation techniques. Current status Deghayes conducted an interview with the Guardian newspaper, published on January 21, 2010. See also * Omar Deghayes v. George W. Bush * Initial Reaction Force * Detainee abuse References External links *Amnesty International page devoted to Omar Deghayes, Amnesty International *Save Omar Website archive of news articles, letters from Deghayes. *British resident blinded at Guantanamo, lawyer says (.pdf), Report prepared for the Law Society, by the Press Association, February 17, 2005 *Omar Deghayes campaign builds Socialist Worker Online June 18, 2005 *Sister's Guantanamo strike fears, BBC, September 9. 2005 *U.S. Military Tube-Feeds 13 Gitmo Strikers, San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2005 *Revealed: the diary of a British man on hunger strike in Guantanamo, The Independent, September 11, 2005 *Behind barbed wire in Guantanamo, Newsday, October 3, 2005 *Detainee: They blinded me, Newsday, October 3, 2005 *Inmate's writings raise questions of identification, treatment at Guantanamo, Newsday, October 3, 2005 *Behind barbed wire in Guantanamo, originally published in Newsday, October 3, 2005 *Justice for Omar, The Argus, November 11, 2005 * London Demonstration: Justice for the British Residents in Guantanamo Bay,eyetopic.co.uk, January 21, 2006 * mirror *Omar Deghayes speaks to Panorama BBC, 13 July 2009 *Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo, documentary featuring extensive interviews with Omar Deghayes, Spectacle Productions, 2009 *Omar Deghayes: 'He was brought in manacled and hooded' The Guardian 14 July 2010 *The torture files: the interrogations (LC13) Category:1969 births Category:Libyan extrajudicial prisoners of the United States Category:British extrajudicial prisoners of the United States Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the University of Wolverhampton Omar Deghayes Category:Libyan immigrants to the United Kingdom Category:Guantanamo detainees known to have been released Category:People from Tripoli